“By St. George!” the bailiff said, “you have indeed been justified in your surmises, and I am glad that I attached sufficient importance to your suspicions to let you undertake this strange enterprise.  What think you, Sir John Boswell?”

“I think with you, that Sir Gervaise has fully justified his insistence in this matter, which I own I considered to be hare brained folly.  What is to be done next, Sir Gervaise?”

“That is what I have been turning over in my mind.  You see, I may have little warning of what is going to take place.  I may not hear of it until we are locked up for the night and the affair is on the point of taking place, and it will, of course, be most needful that I shall be able to communicate with you speedily.”

“That, of course, is of vital importance,” the bailiff said.  “But how is it to be managed?”

“That is what I cannot exactly see, Sir John.  An armed guard remains in our room all night.  But, in the first place, he might be himself in the plot, and if not, the slaves would almost certainly overpower him and kill him, as a preliminary to the work of knocking off their chains.”

“Is there a window to the room?  At least, of course there is a window, but is it within your reach?”

“There are six small loopholes —­ one on each side of the door, and two in each of the side walls; they are but four inches across and three feet in length, and there are two crossbars to each; they are four feet from the floor.”

“At any rate, they are large enough for your arm to pass through, Sir Gervaise, and you might drop a strip of cloth out.”

“Certainly I could, Sir John.  I could easily hide a piece of white cotton a yard or so long in my clothes, scanty as these are, and could certainly manage, unobserved, to drop it outside the window.”

“Then the rest is for us to contrive, Boswell.  We must have some one posted in the yard of the prison, with instructions to go every ten minutes throughout the night to see if a strip of white cotton has been dropped out.  When he finds it he must go at once to William Neave, the governor.  He is a sturdy Englishman, and there is no fear of his having been bribed to turn traitor; but it were well to take no one into our confidence.  I think we cannot do better than employ Ahmet on this business, as he already knows that Sir Gervaise is masquerading there.  We will have William Neave up here presently.  Tell him that for certain reasons we wish Ahmet to pass the night for the present in the prison, and arrange with him on what excuse we can best bestow him there without exciting suspicion.  At any rate, Sir Gervaise, that is our affair.”

He went to a closet and took out a white mantle, tore a strip off the bottom, and gave it to Gervaise.